Unleaving
by Acey Dearest
Summary: Sometimes personal best isn't good enough, but Mello, knowing this, cannot quite accept it. Spoilers up to around chapter 58 or 59.


"Unleaving"

by Acey

Author's Note: I doubt we'll ever find out Matt and Mello's actual nationalities at this point, so forgive me for taking a stab at it… thanks. Spoilers really only go up to chapter fifty-eight or so, but knowing who Matt is might help, though in canon he's never fleshed out very much (but he is stated as having been at Wammy's). From a fellow second-best (well, fifth-best, according to class rank), here's to you, Mello.

_Yea, though I give my body to be burned, it profit me nothing…_

Mello was never a planner, had in fact mocked anyone and everyone with a plan. Plans were painful. Strategy was painful.

Near, Mello felt, was immune to pain in his computer chair. Left entirely to his own devices, Near would build a Taj Mahal of matchsticks, and Mello would be left there glaring over it and wanting—dearly, dearly wanting—to set it ablaze.

L had realized this years before, had mildly informed Mello over a chocolate bar that being best didn't matter, in the scheme of things.

"I don't want to be the best. I just want to beat Near," he lied, feeling guilty as L stared him down, because best and Near in most minds at the orphanage were synonymous. "Because Near annoys me."

"How does he annoy you?" L asked, voice its usual dull monotone. Mello had never known it to be any different, neither high nor low, just—there, placid, with very little inflection, in stubborn contrast to Mello's own: accent, accent, accent, as though he were always on the verge of something, always on edge.

Mello didn't reply for a second, just watched as L peeled away at more of the wrapper and broke the chocolate into pieces, dropping them one by one into his mouth.

"He—," Mello paused, tried for calmness, "he just _does_. C'mon, L, don't you know people that just really tick you off?"

L sighed and shook his head.

Mello pressed him.

"Nobody at all?"

"To me, people are people, Mello—that's all."

L rubbed at his chin with the palm of his hand, wiping off the chocolate that had smeared, and gave him a grin, lopsided, half-sad. Quickly they returned to their usual silence, L finishing the bar and Mello gulping down the sandwich, the only silence Mello could ever stand.

"You think I hate Near, don't you, L?" Mello would have said, but when he had thought to say it L had long since finished, waved, and walked away.

--

By the time he could give voice to just what irritated him about Near, L was off in Japan, working on the case. The first week after L had gone, Mello had a speech reserved for when L came back, detailing Near's insufferableness—quite logically, Mello thought. For three weeks it had been memorized. He'd run up to L before he'd even gone through the door of the orphanage, pull him by the arm into a corner. Say that he was glad he'd caught Kira, really glad, ask him all the questions he could think of, and tell him that while he was gone, he'd figured out why Near aggravated him so much.

"Do you want to hear it, L?"

And L, he thought, would concede.

After Mello had stated all his reasons he wasn't sure what L would do, but in his imagination it centered on him nodding and assuring him that truthfully, Near had always annoyed him as well. And they would walk into the orphanage, with the other children yelling their welcome backs and we missed yous, but Near would be nowhere in sight.

In his visions, Near would be on his computer, or twirling his hair, or piling up a building made of cards—out of sight and utterly oblivious, so that L with his justice and vision would realize that truly, Mello was the best, after all.

But Mello couldn't wait on L's return.

It seemed that Near could. Near hadn't invented a speech that Mello knew of, hadn't changed his bland routine. Near didn't even mention L, which grated on him further, as though that now that the older boy was a continent away, he was dead already.

It wouldn't have bothered him so if the dread hadn't been building inside Mello.

He brought this up to Near, knowing that if he didn't, the subject would never be brought up at all—grudgingly climbing up the staircase to Near's room, banging loudly on the door.

"Too loud," he heard. "Mello."

"Let me in, then," and Mello grumbled as he listened (or thought he listened) to Near's shuffle across the floor, his slow turning of the key. Mello grabbed for the doorknob as soon as the key clicked, but Near was ready for him and pulled it open before he could.

"What do you want?"

"Your grade on our last English essay."

"You can't have that."

Mello fumed. Near, not caring, told him the grade—three points higher than his—and asked him if he next wanted to know the comments the teacher had added in the margins. Mello did not.

"That's not even what I came here for, Near. L's been gone for a month."

"I know that."

"So then why don't you just _say_ something?"

"There's nothing to say." Near was back to his puzzle, the _Titanic_ in ten thousand pieces on the floor. Mello glowered as he watched Near begin to piece it together, never pulling a misplaced piece out, never staring over them with the least bit of frustration.

"Of _course_ there is! What's with you? Don't you even worry about what's going on with him? He can't even send _e-mail_ here. The case is that dangerous. Don't you care? If Kira killed him, you'd just sit there!"

"If that happened, I would do more than sit."

"You think it will, don't you? Don't you, Near?" His voice caught in his throat. "You think he'll get killed like all those criminals. Like the F.B.I. agents and the Japanese newscasters. Don't you? Then say so, damn it!"

Near put another piece of the _Titanic_ together, the edge of a lifeboat.

"You're very emotional, Mello." Near's finger found its way to his hair, curling the white locks around it. "I could lend you one of my puzzles. I have a very old five-piece one. Maybe it would stem your anger a bit."

Mello marched out, slamming the door, hoping that perhaps the sound would make Near cringe.

--

Mello occasionally talked to Matt about Near, since there was no one he could talk about L to, decent, understanding Matt, who'd cheerfully rant about British girls, Japanese girls, Anywhere girls, if given a listening ear.

"What about American girls?" Mello asked him once dryly.

"Oh, them." He waved his hand. "Too picky. Pretty enough, but too picky. They'd rather have a foreign guy than me, you know? You ought to visit there sometime. Yeah, they'd go nuts over you."

Mello doubted it. He also doubted Matt really remembered enough of the U.S. to make any statements at all, but let it pass, because that was Matt.

"But I've been stuck here at Wammy's since forever, you know. Maybe they'll be fooled into thinking I'm British."

Near would have said something biting and sarcastic, but half to defy Near and half to assure Matt, he shook his head.

"You'll never get rid of that accent." Mello remembered Near mentioning once in a benign, almost talkative mood (a full, straight paragraph the time they had to sit together in History the year before) that he thought Matt was doing all he could to keep his accent, but Near, unlike Mello, could not quite figure out why.

"Then maybe I'll go back anyway. At least get out of here early." Matt chewed thoughtfully on the toothpick. "I'm not competitive like you. But sometimes I get tired of always being stuck with people that are smarter than me."

"You're at an orphanage for geniuses, idiot."

Matt's response was to punch him and laugh.

"Oh, it's not you," he said, strangely, "it's everyone else. I don't care about being bossed around—that's okay, so long as I agree with whomever I'm the yes-man to. But if whoever's bossing me has a superiority complex—which most of the kids here have… it's irritating." Matt rolled his eyes before he bizarrely went back to the original conversation. "Well, Near would call them too loud. The American girls."

"Near would call a cockroach too loud," Mello answered, irresistibly distracted.

"Good point."

Something struck him, had actually gnawed at him for years but he had never admitted it until then.

"Near's a machine. Sometimes I honestly think he's a machine." He jerked his rosary from his neck and studied it, staring at the beads: fifty of them, fifty, always fifty. If Mello hadn't had the number memorized he would not have been able to match Near's speed in counting it.

Matt shrugged, growing mildly disinterested.

"So set him up with a Vulcan and stop worrying about it, then." He cocked his head to the side. "That'd be interesting; really… if they had children they might be albinos… because albinism is hereditary and Near _is_ an albino, right…? Pointy-eared, green-blooded albinos…"

Mello didn't answer.

--

Near had copied L, then had the audacity to call him a loser once he was dead. Near had stolen away L's attributes one by one, efficiently, greedily. Mello had seen him do it since long before L's death, as though Near, finding only one person worth respecting in the world, felt he should attempt to duplicate him.

It was a flawed attempt. Near was too small, too pale, too disinterested. To Mello, it seemed L rendered emotionless. L rendered gutless.

And yet that was all that was left of L on Earth, this semi-clone that Mello despised.

It couldn't be that way. Mello refused to let it be that way.

He ran his mind through what little Near had not taken. Tennis ability—Near would never play tennis and Mello wasn't inclined to try. Thick black bags under the eyes—Mello knew he couldn't coerce himself into insomnia. The possibilities felt too forced, too mimicked. L would never have approved.

Mello thought, chewing his lower lip until he tasted blood, biting back tears at the man who would never return.

He thought of the Near conversation and the candy L had eaten then.

Mello did not consider, did not plan. He bought fifteen bars of chocolate (Hershey's—foreign and cheap; Matt would've spared a grin), and wolfed them down in brutal succession. By the thirteenth bar he was retching (Mello had thought his stomach surely could have taken this—if Near could siphon the rest of L so easily, so _painlessly_, then he, Mello, ought to have smoothly revived that one quality), but he was learning. He bought eighteen the next day, and this time every bar lurched and burned in his stomach but went down, half from his own stubborn forcing.

By the third day he had left the orphanage, the wrappings coating the floor of his room, the only grave-roses Mello could think to give.

--

finis


End file.
